Abe was a member of a prominent political family. His grandfather Kishi Nobusuke served as Japan’s prime minister from 1957 to 1960, and his great-uncle Sato Eisaku held the same post from 1964 to 1972. After graduating from Seikei University in 1977, Abe moved to the United States, where he studied political science at the University of Southern California. In 1979 he returned to Japan and joined Kobe Steel, Ltd. He subsequently became active in the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), and in 1982 he began working as secretary to his father, Abe Shintaro, who was Japan’s foreign minister.

In 1993 Abe won a seat in the lower house of the Diet (parliament) and later held a series of government posts. He garnered much support for his tough stance toward North Korea, especially after that country revealed in 2002 that it had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and ’80s. Abe, who was then deputy chief cabinet secretary, oversaw the subsequent negotiations. In 2003 he was named secretary general of the LDP. Due to LDP term limits, prime minister and LDP leader Koizumi Junichiro was forced to leave office in 2006, and he was succeeded in both posts by Abe. Abe became the country’s first prime minister to have been born after World War II and its youngest since the war.

A conservative, Abe sought to strengthen ties with the United States and pursue a more assertive foreign policy. Abe supported United Nations sanctions against North Korea following that country’s nuclear test and imposed a set of unilateral sanctions on North Korea that include included a ban on all visits to Japanese ports by North Korean vessels. He also pledged to revise the country’s postwar constitution, which placed severe restrictions on its military. In domestic affairs, Abe pledged promised to shore up the country’s pension and health-insurance systems. However, his government soon became embroiled in a series of public gaffes and financial scandals. In addition, the administration drew criticism for its slow response to the discovery that for a decade the government had been mishandling the pension records of millions of citizens. In July 2007 the LDP lost its majority in the upper house, and in September Abe announced that he was resigning.